The purest and highest devotion

[dattaswami]

The purest and highest devotion

 

You must serve and love God without aspiring for anything in return from Him. This is pure love. Your aspiration is impurity and your selfishness is the bad smell by which the Lord gets repelled. If you serve the Lord without aspiring for anything in return, such love is the purest and highest devotion. The Lord is fully pleased with such devotion alone and He will do anything or will go to any extent for you. This can be understood from the world itself. To learn philosophy, the world gives the real picture. Books may contain faulty knowledge, but the world contains only the truth. To know whether the concept in the book is right or not you must refer to the world. This first authority for any knowledge is the Scripture; the second authority is logic. Logic is more important than scripture because you should decide the validity of a concept in the scripture by logic alone. The third authority is experience in the world, which is the top most authority. Any concept in the scripture should be discussed with logic and finally approved only through its experience in the world. These three authorities are called Shruti (scripture), Yukti (logic) and Anubhava (experience in the world).

 

So the purest love can be seen in the world. Suppose somebody loves and serves you without aspiring for anything in return and his love is pure by all your tests, you imagine how much you are pleased! You will do anything for him. It applies to God also. If you serve Him without aspiring for anything in return from Him, and if your pure love passes all his severe tests, He will do anything for your sake. Love is proved only through service. Mere words and feelings are of no use. Service can be associated with words and feelings, like a plate of rice is associated with curry and pickles.